


promises we never made

by GalaxyOwl



Category: Friends at the Table (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/F, does this qualify as "slow burn"
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-29
Updated: 2018-07-29
Packaged: 2019-06-11 19:29:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,705
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15322629
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GalaxyOwl/pseuds/GalaxyOwl
Summary: Maritime Lapel makes it off of September alive.Maxine Ming can't seem to get over this crush.





	promises we never made

**Author's Note:**

> fatt femslash week: promises
> 
> i briefly considered giving this a cass&maxine relationship tag and honestly? power move

“So,” Maxine says, trying to make it sound casual. “Were you thinking of taking anyone to the spring formal?”

Maritime looks up from her homework. Maxine has been ignoring her own work for the past twenty minutes or so, rehearsing this question in her mind. Now the words hang in the air between them as they sit in the library, alone on this floor except for the books and banks of computers.

The dance is in two days.

“Not really,” Maritime says. “Not my thing.”

That’s not true.

Maxine _knows_ that’s not true. She knows that Maritime was planning on asking her, because Maritime’s friend Aria had told her as much when she’d caught her in the dining hall a couple weeks ago, made her promise not to tell Maritime she was expecting it. (Only that hadn’t happened, no, that couldn’t have happened because a week ago Maxine had barely known who Aria Joie was, never mind spoken to her before.)

“Oh,” Maxine says out loud. “Okay.”

It would’ve been too late to figure out an outfit by now, anyways. Maxine hadn’t even wanted to go herself, not really, but she’d thought that… Well. The way Aria had looked when she’d told her, she’d been starting to wonder if her feelings were really that obvious.

But apparently not. Or apparently Maritime didn’t reciprocate after all. Or…

They’re not going to the dance together. It’s not that big of a deal, really. Right?

“Were you planning on going, then?” Maritime asks.

“No,” Maxine says. “It’s just, Aria mentioned to me that she thought you were.”

“Huh,” Maritime says. Almost like she’s not really listening. She goes back to her reading—whatever she has pulled up on the mesh, which Maxine is suddenly less sure is homework.

“I…” _I was wondering if you wanted to go, with me?_ She doesn’t say it. She could, but she doesn’t. She can’t really blame Maritime for not being the one to say it when she doesn’t have the courage herself, can she? It’s just, what if she’s been misreading this? What if Aria lied to her, or misunderstood the situation, and Maritime only ever has thought of Maxine as a friend and by asking her _this_ , Maxine is going to ruin even that?

So she doesn’t say anything.

***

They don’t go to the dance together.

Maxine doesn’t even see Maritime that whole day. Doesn’t really see anyone. Actively avoids it, if she’s being honest.

It’s dumb. She knows that. She knows she shouldn’t be this upset about a school dance. But then she thinks about Maritime again, Maritime who’s pretty and kind and _smart_ , who’s one of the most talented people Maxine knows and has a laugh prettier than any song Maxine’s ever heard, and she loses it all over again.

So Maxine knows that on the other side of campus everyone is having fun but _she_ is sitting alone in her room trying not to cry over her dumb crush.

Months earlier, Cass starts acting weird. Only, that doesn’t make sense, of course, because it can’t be months earlier if it’s happening now, if it’s happening _after_ Maritime doesn’t ask her to prom, so it must be months later, only there’s a part of Maxine’s mind that is still in her room, alone, steeping in her emotions, even as, months earlier, Cass says things that don’t make sense and leads her out into the forest.

Something’s off about how Cass is acting. Only that doesn’t make sense either, because Maxine Ming and Cassander Timaeus Berenice have never met before today.

And there is a cabin in the forest that is something other than a cabin, and there is a robot that is something other than a robot, and there is a chorus of voices in the back of Maxine’s head, and there is a horrible, horrible buzzing hum that once she’s noticed it she can’t stop hearing. And then Cass has a gun out and, what the hell, since when does Cass have a gun—but also, but also, since when is she friends with someone named Cass, who the _fuck_ is this person standing in front of her asking her questions that don’t make sense—and Maxine stumbles backwards, mumbles something—

And turns and leaves. Someone (it’s Cass, she still knows that, still knows who they are, even if she doesn’t understand how) shouts her name, but she does not turn around, and she does not go inside the cabin that is something other than a cabin.

She is breathing hard by the time she makes it back to campus. Her skirts are ruined and her mind is spinning and somehow, it is still prom night.

Maxine knows how this goes. It already happened. She spends the entire evening alone in her dorm room. And yet, here she is, the entire campus abuzz with excitement, and there’s some part of her that’s thinking, _oh, of course_ , and remembering that she’s sad about Maritime not asking her out. But she felt something—heard something—out in those woods, and she can’t forget it that easily.

Here’s something she knows, even if she doesn’t understand it: everyone here is in terrible danger.

It’s luck, or maybe destiny, that she spots Maritime in the crowd, then, as she passes the building where the dance is being held, the decorations suddenly strange and garish to look at. It’s silly, but her first thought is to wonder why Maritime is there when she told Maxine she wasn’t going.

Maritime’s not dressed up, or anything—something is off here—as if _everything_ isn’t off here—and Maxine calls her name, but by then she’s already disappeared inside.

Maxine follows her in. She chases after her, past a crowd of half-familiar, half-real faces, and catches up to her at the threshold of a room, lays her hand on Maritime’s shoulder.

Maritime tenses. Maxine lowers her hand.

“Maritime,” she says. “It’s me.”

Maritime turns towards her. She looks at her, silent, for a long moment.

“What’s going on?” Maxine asks. “What is this place?”

“Maxine,” Maritime says, instead of answering. “Are you real?” She reaches out a tentative hand towards Maxine, holds it still in the air there, and Maxine, cautious, takes it in her own. “I need you to be real.”

“I’m real,” Maxine says. She squeezes Maritime’s hand.

Maritime takes a deep breath.

“What is this place?” Maxine repeats. “What’s in that room?”

“I—“ Maritime’s voice cracks. “I don’t know,” she says. “I think I have an idea, but I don’t know for sure. Will you come find out with me?”

“Of course,” Maxine says.

And she does.

***

Maritime Lapel dies.

Only that doesn’t happen, no, that _can’t_ be what happens because Maxine _won’t let it_.

***

It isn’t too long after that that all hell breaks loose.

There are ships flying overhead, and there is a shape in the distance that is bigger than it should have any right to be. And in the chaos, somehow, Cass finds her again.

(“Maxine,” they say, “do you trust me?”

“No,” she says.

“I—fair enough. Do you want to get the fuck out of here?”)

Cass says they have a ship they can take her to, and Maxine doesn’t understand how that can possibly true but right now she doesn’t have any choice but to believe them. So she takes Maritime’s hand, and, together, they follow Cass and board the battered OriCon vessel, and do their best to ignore the horrible whining hum in the background of everything.

And then she looks out the window, and September is gone.

***

Maxine marches into the common room of the Kingdom Come and says, “Alright, now who the _fuck_ are you people?”

The group of them—Cass, Aria, and Mako Trig of all people, who Maxine vaguely remembers having a class with a few semesters back, as well as the two strangers—stare at her a moment in silence. They’re maybe an hour out from where September used to be, and Maxine has spent enough time staring at the empty void of space in the rear window to start to wonder if getting on a ship with someone who is, in reality, a total stranger, was really a good decision.

Cass stands from their seat. “My name is Cassander Timaeus Berenice—“

“I know _that_.” Maxine has years’ worth of blurry memories of time spent with this person. She knows their name, but she doesn’t know the truth of them. That’s the whole problem.

“Right,” Cass says, slowly. They take a breath. “Uh. What don’t you know?”

“Why were you on September in the first place?” Maxine says. “What was… _any_ of that? I don’t…“ She loses steam, and her next words come out quiet. “I don’t understand.” She hates how vulnerable she sounds. But for the first time in years, she can think clearly. Can form the events of the last hour or so into a coherent, linear experience, which was something that she hadn’t even realized was difficult on September until suddenly she did.

“It’s…” Cass glances towards the others.

“That thing is called Rigor,” Aria says. “We were here to try to figure out how to stop it, for all the good that wound up being.”

They explain, as best they can. About Rigor, and Liberty & Discovery, and the Chime. Maritime wanders in halfway through the conversation, and there’s some backtracking, and at the end of it there’s some part of Maxine that still can’t reconcile her memories of Cass, her best friend, with this stranger standing in front of her, but she’s pretty sure that isn’t _their_ fault.

“Where is this ship going?” Maxine asks, eventually.

People exchange glances. No one answers.

“Counterweight,” Aria says, when no one else offers a response. She seems to be talking more to them than to Maxine. “We’re going back to Counterweight, and then we’ll figure things out from there.” She looks at Maxine. "If there’s somewhere you want us to drop you on the way there, that’s fine too.”

Where does Maxine want to go?

Home, is her first thought. She wants to go home.

(That night, as she lies awake on the floor in the room that has been hastily cleared out to room the additional passengers, she pulls up the Kingdom Come’s basic mesh connection and starts mapping where she needs to get off to catch a flight back to Kesh.)

***

The mood on the ship is somber. Maxine still feels like an intruder, in a way, like a stranger who’s just wandered into a family funeral.

“I don’t know,” Maritime says, when she admits as much out loud. “They’re mourning their friend, AuDy, right? But there were so many other people who were lost. Someone has to mourn them, too.”

Maxine remembers Maryland September, and her kind words. She remembers the boy who used to sit next to her in math class who in retrospect probably wasn’t real but _maybe_ was and always lent her an extra pencil when she forgot hers. She remembers the girl who worked at her favorite coffee shop off-campus who had started greeting her by name.

They’re all gone. Maybe not dead, but gone.

“I can’t stop thinking about it,” Maritime says suddenly, without context.

“About what?”

“What we found,” Maritime says, so quietly it takes Maxine a moment to register the words. “The—“ A shaky breath. “The clones.” The word hits Maxine like a bullet. She’d almost forgotten, in everything that happened.

But of course Maritime hadn’t.

“They _made me_ , Max,” Maritime whispers. “They grew me in a vat, a hundred times over, me and the others. And they let me die a hundred times over, and they didn’t _care_. I keep turning it over in my head as if somehow that will make it less horrifying. I’m... I don’t know. I don’t know what I _am_ , Max, I guess that’s kind of the point. I was their experiment, and now I’m…”

“Hey,” Maxine says, more forceful than she intended. She takes Maritime’s hand. “You’re Maritime Lapel,” she says. “You’re my friend.”

Maritime doesn’t respond, but squeezes Maxine’s hand, eyes closed, and Maxine stares at her face and wonders if the person behind it is the same one she’s known her whole time on September or if that person died at some point and they just replaced her like a broken computer. It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter, it shouldn’t matter; this is still Maritime.

Maritime takes a deep breath and opens her eyes. She doesn’t let go of Maxine’s hand. “Are you going back to Kesh?” she asks.

Maxine blinks. Where did this change of subject come from?

“Yeah,” she says. “I’m going home.”

Maritime nods, and Maxine’s stomach sinks as she puts it together. Maritime doesn’t have a home outside of the September Institute.

“Where are you going to go?” Maxine asks softly.

“I...” Maritime doesn’t meet Maxine’s eyes. Her voice is very small as she says, “I don’t know. September is all I’ve ever had.”

Maxine squeezes her hand back. “Hey,” she says, “it’s okay.”

“Is it?” Maritime asks.

Maxine doesn’t answer. What could she possibly say? She doesn’t really know what Maritime is going through. The September Institute has been a big part of Maxine’s life, yes, but it’s a part she was always going to leave behind. Even if not like this, with that _thing_...

“Come home with me,” Maxine says. If Maritime doesn’t have anywhere else to go, she can come back to Kesh with Maxine. She can’t imagine what her family will say about her bringing home some no-name girl from September, but she also can’t bring herself to care.

“What? No.” Maritime’s response is instant. “I can’t do that to you.”

“I’m inviting you,” Maxine says. “You’re not ‘doing’ anything to me.”

“No,” Maritime says, “I know. But...”

“But what?”

“I’m just not sure it’s a good idea.”

“Maritime,” Maxine says. “Do you have anywhere else to go?”

Maritime flinches. “No,” she says, softly, “I don’t.”

“Then come home with me. Just to visit, until you can get something else sorted out.”

“I...” Maritime finally looks up, meets Maxine’s eyes. “Okay,” she says. “Thank you.”

***

Maxine rings the doorbell, and steps back. No one responds, and Maxine meets eyes with Maritime, standing beside her, who smiles.

Maritime drew attention, on the streets of Kesh. She’s a nobody dressed in foreign clothes, walking side by side with the daughter of the duke. People took notice. Not that it was really that different from the looks people on September gave the weird Kesh girl walking side by side with one of the Institute’s most gifted strati. Still, it was a relief when they make it to the safety of Maxine’s house; she could see Maritime’s shoulders unclench as they walked up the garden path to the door, leaving the crowded streets behind.

No one is responding. Should she ring the bell again? She’d messaged her parents to expect her, but she hadn’t been able to give them an exact time estimate. Maybe they’re—

It’s a servant who opens the door. They usher her and Maritime inside, and promise to alert her parents right away, and already Maxine is aware of the ways that her time at the Institute has changed her. The things she got used to, away at school.

Maritime is giving her a strange look.

But soon enough, Maxine is in front of her parents. They’re happy to see her, of course, and she’s… Well, she _is_ happy to see them. But it isn’t long before she’s fending off questions she doesn’t have all the answers to. Like, “What _happened_ on September?” and “What exactly is your relationship with this girl you’ve brought home?”

The latter of which she responds to with a stammered, “She’s my friend.”

Out of the corner of Maxine’s eye, some expression flicker across Maritime’s face, but it’s gone before she can make sense of it, replaced by the same carefully neutral expression she’d been wearing the entire conversation. Maxine must have imagined that she looked disappointed.

Despite all of the needling and exaggerated concern, though, a room is found for Maritime to stay in, and, after another hour or so of conversation, the two of them are finally, _finally_ able to escape to the relative privacy it provides.

Maritime sits down on the bed with a heavy sigh, runs her hand along the top of the thick blanket.

“Wow,” she says.

“Sorry about that,” Maxine says, taking a seat next to her. “I was so focussed on getting home, I didn’t really think about it.”

Maritime laughs. “No, it’s fine,” she says. “It’s just a lot.”

Maritime doesn’t have parents, Maxine remembers in that moment. She’d never mentioned them before, and now she knows why. What must it be like for her, to be so violently confronted with that fact, so soon after—

But that’s not Maxine’s place to speculate about, really. If Maritime wants to talk about it, she can.

Instead, Maxine watches Maritime’s face as her gaze travels the rest of the room. It’s one of the smaller rooms in the house, but still magnitudes larger than any of the dorms at the Institute, and fully furnished, too. For the first time, though, Maxine can’t help but think that it feels cold and impersonal compared to the walls of Maritime’s old dorm room, covered in posters and art and mesh overlays. That room no longer exists, most likely. (Or if it does… Maxine doesn’t want to think about what the remains of the Institute must be like. Not now.)

“You okay?” she says aloud.

Maritime flinches. “What?” she says. “Oh. Yeah, I’m fine.” A pause. She doesn’t meet Maxine’s eyes. “I think I’m gonna just go to bed early though, if that’s cool? I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Okay,” Maxine says, standing. “See you tomorrow.”

***

The weather never really changes on Kesh. On September, the changes are mostly “rainy” and “ _really_ rainy,” but they’re still there. There’s _variation_ , as one storm passes and for a few days there is sunlight, and suddenly the green is filled with students, and then the next day it rains again and everyone complains and stays inside and plays games on the mesh.

On Kesh, there is only the one type of weather, really. Pleasant, like a spring day with no wind. Still and simple. Unchanging. Part of Maxine wishes it would rain.

She shows Maritime the manor grounds, and the nearby town, and the lake where her family used to go fishing.

Sometimes Maritime looks at her, her face illuminated by the sunlight reflecting off the lake water, casting odd shadows on the elegant lines of her face, and she smiles, and Maxine thinks she could live in this moment forever. But then it ends, and Maritime is looking through her more than at her, her gaze fixed on some ghost on the horizon.

They don’t talk about September. They don’t talk about leaving it. They definitely don’t talk about the feeling Maxine gets when their hands brush as they walk back up to the house.

***

Then, one morning, maybe three weeks after the two of them arrived, there’s a knock on the door to Maxine’s bedroom, and when she opens it, Maritime takes a deep breath, and meets her eyes, and says, “I’m leaving.”

Maxine steps out into the hallway, closer to her. “What? Why?”

“I’ve found a ship that will take me off-planet,” Maritime says. “You said it yourself, this was just until I figured something else out.”

Maxine stares at her. “What else have you figured out?”

“I told you.” Maritime doesn’t meet her gaze. “I found a ship. I have all my stuff packed. I’m leaving.”

“You’re—today?”

She nods.

“Maritime…” Maxine says. She raises a hand, as if to reach out to her, but doesn’t. Just holds it in the air there, afraid in that moment of what would happen if she gets any closer.

“Thank you, Maxine,” Maritime says. “It was really nice of you to let me stay. Tell your parents I appreciate it. But I’m an adult. I’ll be just fine on my own.”

“Okay,” Maxine says, her voice wobbling. She lowers her hand.

Maritime looks, for a second, as if she’s about to say something else. But she doesn’t. She just turns and leaves.

***

A few months later, Maxine gets a call.

It’s from an unfamiliar device, and she almost doesn’t answer it—who would be calling her that she doesn’t already know?—but her curiosity gets the better of her.

An image of Maritime Lapel flickers onto her screen, and Maxine’s breath catches.

“Hey, Max,” Maritime says.

“Hey.”

Maxine can’t seem to find any other words to say.

Maritime’s clothes are new, she notes, all bright colors and careful layers. It’s a different look from both the Institute’s uniforms and the clothes she borrowed from Maxine while she was staying on Kesh. Some part of Maxine’s brain notes that she looks very clearly OriCon, but mostly she looks… nice.

“It’s been a while,” Maritime says. “I’m sorry about that.”

“Are you?” Maxine doesn’t mean for it to come out accusatory, but it does.

Maritime flinches. “Yes,” she says. “I should have told you I was planning on leaving. I just… I was worried that if you knew, you’d ask me to stay, and I don’t know if I’d have been able to say no.” She laughs, then, as if to relieve the seriousness of what she’s just said, but Maxine is already spinning this information through her head.

She wants to stay mad, she really does, but she can’t possibly do it when Maritime is watching her like that. So she just says, “Okay. Where have you been?”

Maritime blinks, takes a moment before she responds, “All over, really. Right now I’m on Archonic, but I’m probably not going to be staying long. I’ve been hopping around the sector. Seeing the sights. Taking odd jobs to pay my way.”

“That’s… nice?” Maxine says. She can just picture it, too: Maritime Lapel, traverser of the Golden Branch, spending weeks on a hundred different spaceships and not caring where they’re taking her, the wind of some alien atmosphere blowing in her hair as she looks out over some distant cityscape.

Maxine can almost picture herself there, too, standing by her side. But Maritime didn’t ask her to come with her; hadn’t wanted to stay by Maxine’s side. So she doesn’t ask if that’s an option. Doesn’t let herself entertain it.

They talk a while longer. Maxine tells Maritime about what’s been happening on Kesh, which is not much, and Maritime tells Maxine about the way the sunlight glitters on the rolling hills of Torru, about the sound the winds of Archonic make against the thick glass windows.

Before the call ends, Maxine says, “Keep in touch, okay?” And if she couldn’t hear the desperation in her own voice she’d be able to see it in the reaction on Maritime’s face. “I miss you.”

“I will,” Maritime says. “I promise.”

***

Maritime keeps her promise. They talk maybe once a week; sometimes more, if Maritime’s in the middle of a particularly boring bit of space travel.

Today, Maritime runs a hand through her hair and says, “Do you remember Mako Trig?”

Maxine furrows her brow. “From September?”

“Yeah,” Maritime says. “I’ve been talking with him a lot recently.”

“Really?” Maxine remembers him, but she can’t say she knew him well. She knows he and Cass had been friends (had known each other in their real lives, she reminds herself), but that had been the extent of her interactions with him. She hadn’t had a single one-on-one conversation with him on the _Kingdom Come_.

“I mean—“ Maritime shrugs. “He’s one of the closest things I have to family, is the thing.”

Oh.

Right.

She hadn’t even really thought about that.

“I mean,” Maxine says, “biology doesn’t make family. You don’t have to pretend to like him just because you’re both...” She gestures vaguely. “You know."

“Clones?” Maritime says.

Maxine flinches at the word, but nods.

“I’m not scared of that word,” Maritime says. “I _refuse_ to be scared of that word.”

“Sorry,” Maxine says. “I didn’t mean…” But she did, really. She’d been worried that Maritime would be hurt, if Maxine put it so bluntly. She should’ve known Maritime wasn’t that fragile.

“It’s fine,” Maritime says. “The point is—family isn’t biology, but sometimes it is a shared past. Mako knows what it’s like, you know? More than anyone else. I just wish he...” She trails off

“Wish he what?”

Maritime makes a face. “Have you ever tried to have a sincere emotional discussion with Mako Trig? It’s like pulling teeth.”

Maxine laughs. “I can only imagine.”

Maritime goes quiet for a while. For a moment Maxine wonders if the connection’s broken, but then she says, “Also, there’s the others.”

“The others?” Maxine says.

“The other clones,” she says. “That he got off of September.”

“Oh,” Maxine says. “I hadn’t realized…”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah.” A pause. “He didn’t save all of them. Just most of the ones that looked like him. If I’d been _thinking_ —“

“It’s not your fault,” Maxine cuts in.

“It’s at least partially my fault!”

“No more so than anyone else who was left on September.” No more so than it is Maxine’s fault.

Maritime sighs. “Probably,” she says. “Point is, those boys are… Also family, in a way?”

“In a good way?” Maxine asks.

“I think so,” Maritime says. “I think so, yeah.”

***

“He offered me a job,” Maritime says. “Mako, that is.”

“What?”

“Yeah. With the Rapid Evening?”

The Rapid Evening was a fairytale. An urban legend. It wasn’t...

But then, Maxine had seen a lot of things she’d thought were impossible, that day on September. It wasn’t out of the question.

“Did you accept it?”

“I told him I’d think about it,” Maritime says. “Honestly, I’m not even sure he had the authority to make that offer, but he did. Now I can’t stop thinking about it.”

“Is... is that the kind of thing you’d want to do?”

“I honestly don’t know.” Maritime pauses. “They’re trying to make a difference against Rigor, Maxine. They’re the only people I’ve heard of who actually seem to be _doing_ anything about this. After what we saw… I keep thinking about it, how _enormous_ it was, how…”

“Rigor’s gone,” Maxine says. “It’s trapped on September for the next few hundred years. We don’t have to worry about it.”

“But someone’s going to have to.”

***

Here’s the thing:

Maxine does not particularly _want_ to go to Apostolos.

But as far as she can tell she doesn’t have a lot of choice in the matter. Her parents are insisting that she go with the delegation—it’s important, they say, that she stay involved in politics, as a member of a noble family; it’s important that Kesh maintain a good relationship as the Demarcgy makes the transition to this new Apokine.

Maxine has found herself less and less interested in politics these days, but without school she has to be doing something to prove herself useful, and so she’s going to Apostolos, whether she likes it or not.

(“Apostolos is pretty nice,” Maritime tells her. For once, they’re both mid-transit while they talk. “I’ve only been there the one time—it’s kind of out of the way—but I thought it seemed like a nice place.”)

It isn’t until they’ve landed and disembarked and are waiting in the hall outside the meeting room that Maxine thinks to ask one of her attendants, “This new Apokine—what are they like?”

She’d spent the trip here trying to avoid thinking about the actual task at hand, and now suddenly she’s realizing she doesn’t even know their _name_. She remembers vaguely hearing about it when the last Apokine had stepped down—a big deal, since they were the first to be leader of the Golden Demarchy, and _not_ the Apostolosian Empire—but she hadn’t paid attention, really. Apostolos was very far away, and she had other things on her mind.

“Oh,” the attendant says, now, “Apokine Cassander?” and Maxine has about five seconds to process this before the door opens.

And the person who comes out is dressed as Apokine but for a split-second Maxine can only see them in their old White Star uniform, complaining to her about the latest homework assignment from that professor they both hated.

“Maxine,” they say, staring.

“Hi, Cass.”

The others in the Kesh delegation are looking at her, now, whispering. None of _them_ knew that Maxine knew that she knew the Apokine, either, she realizes—all the letters she’d written home about her friendship with the youngest scion had only ever existed in her memory.

Cass laughs. “I wasn’t expecting to see _you_ today.”

“Would you believe it if I said I could say the same to you?”

***

“So, you and Berenice, huh?”

Maxine raises an eyebrow. “What are you talking about?”

“It’s all over the tabloids, Max, didn’t you hear?” Maritime says, her tone full of mock seriousness. “’The Apokine’s Keshan paramour’.”

Maxine bursts out laughing. Maritime laughs with her, over the call.

“Oh my god,” Maxine manages through her laughter. “I mean, Cass did mention that conservative parties were pushing for them to get married, but I did _not_ realize…”

“Awfully rude of Cass not tell you you were dating,” Maritime says. Maxine just nods. It’s another minute or so before her laughter subsides—it’s maybe not even actually that funny, but once she’s started, she can’t seem to stop.

She takes a deep breath, and hears Maritime follow suit, on the other end of the call.

“Really, though,” Maritime says, after a moment’s quiet, “you’re not even kind of into them?”

“I’m really not,” Maxine says, surprised. “Cass was—is—one of my best friends, but they’re… Not really my type.”

“Oh?” Maritime says. “What is?”

 _You_ , is Maxine’s first thought, but of course there’s no way she can say that. So she just shrugs.

***

“So I hear we’re dating,” Maxine says. They’re walking the old royal gardens on Apostolos, a place that’s become more familiar to Maxine then she’d ever have thought. These visits have somehow become regular. It turns out that she and Cass get along pretty well in real life, too, and all her advisors like her making friendly with Apostolos. It’s a win-win.

They groan at her comment.

Maxine laughs. “That bad, huh?”

“I thought maybe you were the one person I could talk to who wouldn’t be constantly reminding me of how it would be good for politics if I ‘gave that nice Kesh girl a chance’.”

“Sorry,” Maxine says, still smiling.

Cass cracks a smile as well. “It’s fine,” they say. “I hope no one’s been bothering you about it.”

Maxine laughs and shakes her head. “Just Maritime.”

“Maritime…” Cass echoes. “Lapel?” They stop walking.

Maxine nods.

“Eidolons, I don’t think I’ve thought about her since... Probably since September.”

“You two were never really that close even back then, were you?” Then, realizing what she’s said, “I mean, in the... In what you remember.”

“Yeah,” Cass says. “She was Aria’s friend but she was never really mine.”

“Hm.” Maxine busies her hands twisting a leaf off of nearby bush.

“I don’t think I really realized that you and her were friends either, to be honest,” Cass says.

“Really?” Maxine says, her hand freezing.

She supposes it makes sense. It’s not like she, Maritime, and Cass had ever all hung out together or anything. Cass was a White Star friend; Maritime was someone Maxine knew on her own. Those two parts of her life never really mixed. (And, she reminded herself, her time spent with Cass was a set of new memories layered over the others. It made sense that they felt separate.)

“Yeah.”

“You know…” Maxine grips the leaf in her hand. She looks down at it so she doesn’t have to look at Cass. “It’s… complicated, with Maritime. She’s my friend, but also…”

“Also what?”

“Did you ever get the vibe that she was maybe into me?”

Cass raises an eyebrow. “I can’t say that I did,” they say, “but like you just said—“

“You guys never really knew each other, yeah.” Maxine sighs.

Cass watches her.

She snorts. “Sorry. You’re the ruler of a sovereign nation, you probably have more important things to worry about than my several-year-old crush.”

“Maxine,” Cass says. “I like talking with you _because_ I don’t have to be constantly aware of being a ruler of a sovereign nation.”

Maxine laughs. “I guess that’s fair.”

Cass picks up walking again, starting them in what Maxine knows by now, on her fourth visit, is the direction of the river. “Have you _asked_ her if she’s… ‘into you’?"

Maxine rolls her eyes. “Sure. That’d go over well.”

“Maxine,” Cass says, “You should at least talk to her. With everything that’s happened recently… Who knows how much time any of us have left. You deserve to be happy.”

Maxine stares out at the river, which moves only slowly. Picks up a stone and tosses it in, hoping for it to skip, but it only hits the water with a splash, sending out a circle of ripples that lap against the shoreline.

“That’s not a depressing way of saying that at all,” she says, aloud.

The idea of it—of trying to explain these feelings that Maxine’s been keeping close to her chest for all these years now—is terrifying. But Cass is right, is the thing.

***

“How’s Kesh?” Maritime asks. The question is a little unusual, a little out of nowhere, and Maxine has to think for a moment about how to answer.

“Kesh is… what it’s always been,” she says. “It’s fine, I guess.”

“But you don’t love it there.”

“I don’t know,” Maxine says. “I do, kind of. It’s home. But sometimes it just feels so far away from everything. There’s all this stuff going on in the sector, and it’s like none of it even reaches here, the way some people talk.”

Maritime nods, takes a deep breath. Maxine watches her expression. “How would you feel about the two of us hanging out some time? In person?”

“I… would like that, I think,” Maxine says. It’s been so long since she and Maritime have been in the same physical space that for a moment the idea is almost hard to wrap her head around. “Are you thinking of coming back to Kesh?”

“Um,” Maritime says. “No. I mean—I could, if you want. But I was actually wondering if you’d be willing to come to Counterweight.”

“Sure,” Maxine says, without hesitation. Maritime is asking _her_ to meet up. It’s a low bar, and yet Maxine can’t shake her joy at the fact that Maritime cares enough about her to come to her with this request out of the blue, when Maxine still didn’t have the courage to break their fragile status quo.

But why Counterweight? Why now and never before?

Maritime laughs, a little awkwardly, when she asks. “Well,” she says. “I’m thinking of sticking around here. Like, semi-permanently?”

“Oh,” Maxine says. “Wow. That’s big.”

“Yeah.” Maritime takes a breath. “So. My apartment’s not huge or anything, but it could fit you for a night or two. If you want. You don’t have to, or anything, I know this is kind of out of nowhere—“

“I already said I’d love to,” Maxine says.

“Right,” Maritime says. “Um. Let me know what dates work well for you?”

***

When Maxine emerges from Rethal-Addax spaceport she’s greeted by the sight of Aria Joie waving at her from across the street, Maritime standing beside her. Maxine gives a small wave back, and makes eye contact with Maritime, who smiles.

“Hey,” Maxine says as she approaches. Her gaze darts towards Aria for only a second before landing on Maritime. Maritime, whose hair has been done differently, in some fancy braid, and who Maxine suddenly realizes is standing right in front of her for the first time in years. She aborts the awkward greeting and instead pulls her into a hug. Maritime hugs her back, and when she finally pulls away her smile has broken into a full-on grin.

“It’s good to see you,” Maritime says, and then, “Um. Do you remember Aria?”

Maxine’s first instinct is that of _course_ she remembers Aria; they may never have been close but she knows she was Maritime’s friend back in school. But of course, none of that happened. Aria Joie is someone she spent a couple awkward, quiet weeks of space travel with a few years back, and then never talked to again.

“Yeah,” Maxine says. “It’s good to see you.”

“You too,” Aria says. “Maritime’s told me a lot about you.”

“She has?” Maxine says.

Aria laughs. “Yeah. She has.”

“Aria offered to come with me to pick you up because she knows the area better,” Maritime cuts in. "The transit system here’s a bit of a maze."

“That’s very thoughtful of you,” Maxine says, not sure how else to respond.

“Should we get moving?” Aria says.

She leads them, as promised, to the nearest station and helps them deal with the mess that is Counterweight public transit. (“It’s on my list of things to have worked on, I promise,” Aria says, “it’s just that there are other things on that list that are… More urgent, let’s say.”)

Maxine is grateful to Aria, really, she is, but right now she has a hard time focusing on anything other than Maritime, sitting just beside her.

Maritime shifts slightly, and now their legs are touching, and Maxine freezes at the sudden warmth of contact but Maritime doesn’t move away.

She finds her gaze drawn back to Maritime’s face, over and over: the arch of her nose, the curve of her lips as she smiles at some joke Aria is making. Then Maritime makes eye contact with her, and Maxine realizes she must have been staring. She spends the rest of the ride studying Maritime’s reflection in the opposite window, instead.

***

Maritime takes Maxine to her new apartment and shows her the space. “You can take my room, if you want,” she says. “I don’t mind sleeping on the couch for a few days.”

“Oh,” Maxine says. “You don’t have to do that. I can take the couch.”

“No,” Maritime says. “It’s really fine.”

Maxine sets her bag on the floor, looking at the bed. “If this is going to be an issue,” she says, “it might be easier if we just share the bed?” She regrets the words as soon as they’re out of her mouth, but it’s already too late.

“I—sure,” Maritime says. “Sure, if you’re okay with that.”

“I am,” Maxine says. Maritime nods.

Maxine takes a seat on the side of the bed. After a moment, Maritime joins her. She sits close, even closer than she could on public transit, a casual intimacy that wouldn’t have been out of place back when they were at the Institute but all of a sudden feels like so much more.

“So,” Maritime says, after a moment.

“So?” Maxine echoes.

“I didn’t have an end to that sentence, really,” Maritime says. “I don’t know what we do now. I didn’t have any plans past this.”

Maxine sets a hand on Maritime’s leg. “This is nice.”

Maritime looks at her hand, and then back at Maxine’s eyes. “Yeah,” she says, “it is.”

Silence falls over them again. This is all so fast, but Maxine can’t help but wonder if Maritime feels it too, this feeling in Maxine’s chest that’s so intense she wonders how she’s going to survive if she has to go one more second without kissing her. And then the second passes, and she’s still alive, but the feeling does not go away.

“We should have done this sooner,” Maritime says. “I’m sorry I’ve been so distant.”

“It’s not your fault,” Maxine says. “Not any more than it is mine.”

“I don’t think that’s true,” Maritime says, “but I don’t want to argue about it.” She stands, and Maxine wants to protest at the distance it creates between them. “How do you feel about dinner?”

***

They share the bed, that night. Maritime falls asleep quickly, or pretends she does, but Maxine lies awake deep into the night, trying to resist the urge to move closer to her. She could do it, too, is the thing. There’s now nothing physically stopping her from pulling herself as close to Maritime as she possibly can.

They share the bed. They do no wake up tangled unexpectedly in each other’s limbs. They do not make any moves towards realizing this unspoken yearning that sits deep in Maxine’s chest. But she does fall asleep listening to the gentle rhythm of Maritime’s breathing, and when she wakes to the sight of the unfamiliar apartment around her, Maxine decides that she has to say something, sooner rather than later.

***

“Do you remember,” Maritime says, as they walk down the sidewalk, “that party Aria threw her first year at the Insitute?”

“Oh my god,” Maxine says. “Yes. She basically forced you to come, right?”

“Yeah.” Maritime laughs.

Maxine snorts. “That was where we met, wasn’t it?”

“It was,” Maritime says. “Huh. I’d forgotten that.”

“Or—“ Maxine tries to think. “Aria wasn’t entirely responsible for that party, but she was the reason you were there, right?”

“Yeah.”

“So, that’s how we met in the version with the Chime. I can’t remember…”

“On the green,” Maritime says, softly. “You were sitting on the green, the first week of the semester, and I came up to you to ask if you knew where the art building was.”

As soon as Maritime says it, Maxine can remember it clearly. Making a fool of herself in front of that pretty Blue Moon girl. “I didn’t know where it was,” she says, “but that didn’t stop me from spending the next hour helping you try to find it.”

Maritime laughs. “Exactly.”

Maxine smiles.

“Oh!” Maritime stops walking. “We missed our turn.” They’re headed to some museum Maritime read about but hadn’t been to yet (she insisted they _do things_ with Maxine’s time here, despite the fact that Maxine would be perfectly happy to spend the entire week in Maritime’s apartment). They turn around and start walking back the way they came, putting themselves back on track.

“My memories of September are so jumbled,” Maxine says. “I feel like I don’t know what was real and what wasn’t.”

“All of it was real,” Maritime says. “Or none of it was, depending on how you look at it. But if we both remember it, I think that makes it real.”

Maxine isn’t sure she agrees, but she rather likes how that sounds.

But also. “There’s something I remember.” Her stomach twists. “That I’ve been wondering about.”

Maritime turns her head slightly towards her. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.” She’s doing this. There’s no turning back now. Maybe she’ll ruin everything, but she can’t lose this chance. Not when she doesn’t know if she’ll get another one. “About Aria, actually. Or not really, but. She told me something, back when we were in school.”

Maritime raises an eyebrow.

“Um. Around prom season. She said…” Come on. She doesn’t need to be this stressed about this. This is _Maritime_ ; she’s not going to suddenly hate Maxine after this, not after what they’ve been through together. “She said that you were planning on asking me. To the prom. But, then, you didn’t, so.”

She looks at Maritime, waiting for a reaction, but she just stares at Maxine. For a moment, both of them are wordless.

“I was going to,” Maritime whispers. And then, again, louder, “I was going to. But then I—I was doing some research, and I started finding out about all the stuff that the Institute was up to, and suddenly prom didn’t seem that important anymore.”

“Maritime,” Maxine says. Something like an apology.

“But yeah, I was going to ask you out. You can make fun of me all you want for it.”

Maxine takes a breath. “What if I don’t want to?”

“What?”

“What if… What if I like the idea, of you and me going out?”

“Oh.” Maritime meets Maxine’s eyes. She opens her mouth like she’s going to say something else, then closes it, and then steps closer to Maxine.

They’re still standing there on the sidewalk in the middle of the city when Maritime leans in and kisses Maxine.

So coming to Counterweight was maybe a good idea after all.

***

Maxine was planning to stay for a week, which quickly turns into two, and then three. She’ll have to leave eventually, this isn’t a long-term thing, but... Not yet. Right now, she’s going to soak up the sights of Centralia, soak up the feeling of Maritime’s hand in hers, the sound of Maritime’s laugh.

“God,” Maxine says, one night, over dinner at a tiny local restaurant, “I still can’t believe I was so dumb about this for so long.”

“I can’t believe you _knew_ I was going to ask you out and never said anything. I at least had the excuse of assuming you weren’t interested.”

“That’s not—“ Maxine starts, but of course that _is_ what happened, and besides, Maritime’s tone is light. Maxine just shrugs. “Okay, fine,” she says with a laugh. “Fair enough.”

They both fall quiet a moment. Maxine turns her attention to her noodles.

“A couple days ago,” Maritime says, “You said you were thinking of leaving tomorrow.”

Maxine had said that, hadn’t she? At the time Monday had felt impossibly far off. “Yeah,” she says now. “I... I don’t want to, but I should.”

Maritime nods. “Okay.”

“I’ll come back, though,” Maxine says. “I have to leave—I can’t keep living on a week’s worth of clothes and toiletries—but this doesn’t have to end. I will come back. Or you can come visit me on Kesh again. We’ll make this work.”

“Is that a promise?” Maritime says.

“Yeah,” Maxine says. “I think it is.”

**Author's Note:**

> after the rigor war is over maxine moves to counterweight permanently so she can be with maritime. they go on double dates with aria and jacqui
> 
> (i'm on tumblr & twitter @confusedbluesky if you want to come shout about fatt with me)


End file.
